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Managers in Ireland are more stressed than the terminally ill

Some senior managers in Ireland are so stressed by work that they have a lower quality of life than the terminally ill, according to research from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.

Ciaran O'Boyle, a professor of psychology at the college, studied the experiences of more than 130 managers, using a measure normally employed to assess hospital patients' quality of life.

"For senior managers, the quality of life was lower than any group of patients we looked at, including the terminally ill and those with motor neuron disease," he said.

O'Boyle, who is conducting a stress study for the Irish Management Institute, found the problem particularly acute for employees of foreign-owned companies.

"If the parent company is based on the US west coast, for instance, it creates a whole time-lag difficulty, but there is an increasing sense that managers are expected to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said.

Euro fund set to help retrain victims of globalisation

The European Commission (EC) is planning to launch a fund of up to £343m to help workers who have lost their jobs because of globalisation.

The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, which could benefit up to 50,000 workers in the EU every year, was proposed by Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the EC.

Spidla Vladim, EU commissioner for employment, said: "In a globalised economy, some workers in particular sectors regrettably lose their jobs."

The fund would be available to offer new skills training and promote entrepreneurship among workers who have been laid off or who lose their jobs due to a major company restructuring as result of relocation.

Ireland charged for flouting aviation work-time limits
Ireland has been censured by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for failing to comply with an EU directive that imposes working-time limits in the civil aviation sector.

This made an agreement struck by the Association of European Airlines, the European Transport Workers' Federation, the European Cockpit Association, the European Regions Airline Association (ERA) and the International Air Carrier Association law. It gave EU member states until December 2003 to write its terms on maximum hours and rest periods into their national laws, but Ireland missed this deadline.

The court heard